Not the Alps

Just for constrast, I had a look to see what kind of climbs the Tour de France guys do. A couple of years ago, they did the road through Bourg-Saint-Maurice up into Tignes which I know from snowboarding trips. Bourg is at about 700m, and Tignes le Lac is at 2100m. So the Tour riders were cycling .. nay, racing .. up 1400m in 19miles. So that’s an average climb of 73 metres per mile sustained for 19miles. Whereas on the Wanlockhead road, I was tackling a 57m rise every mile, and only had to do it for 7 miles.

The tour route up Alp d’Huez climbs 1110m in 9.3 miles – a staggering 119 metres gained every mile. The record times from the tour rides are all sub 40 minutes. I took 40 minutes to cover my 400m/7mile climb – whereas Pantani did 1110m/9.3miles in the same time. Well, he was chemically assisted .. but there’s plenty of other folk doing sub-40min climbs there.